Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/303

 The Veneration of the Cow in India. 281

life of happy industry, and hence we are told that Ahura Mazda rains herbage on the earth to support her ; the chief part of the reformatory work of Zoroaster was devoted to preventing the slaughter and maltreatment of cattle during the forays of the outer barbarians, the predatory tribes of the Central Asian steppe, who lived on the milk of cattle and their superfluous young.-^ At the same time, it seems impossible to trace any regular cult of the cow in Vedic or Iranian times, and the passage in the Rig-veda quoted by Professor Macdonell may be merely a poetical exaggeration and not meant to suggest any actual worship.

From the earliest times down to the present the cow and her products were believed to possess special magical powers, and hence they were regarded as objects of taboo, or, as is often the case with animals and things under taboo, they were supposed to be able to remove taboo. Taboo itself generally implies, as an antecedent, what we in a vague way call " holy " or " unclean." " Things are taboo," writes Dr. Jevons,-'^ "which are thought to be dan- gerous to handle or to have to do with ; things "holy" and things " unclean " are alike taboo." When the associations which produced the feeling of " sanctity " are forgotten or misunderstood, we usually find that the idea of "holiness" attached to a person or thing is replaced by the conception that the thing is "unclean." Thus the "uncleanness" attributed to the pig in the Muhammadan world is the result of a primitive belief in the " sanctity " of the animal, which thus became the subject of taboo.-^ This change of conception is well marked in the Hindu beliefs regarding the cow, her parts, and products. Such taboos are obviously part of the religious history of the race.

"A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroaster the Prophet of Ancient Iran, pp. 31, 33 ; Zend Avesta, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi., pp. 169 et seq.

-^ An IntroductioTi to the History of Religion, p. 59.

2*W. R. Smith, op. cit., pp. 2qo et seq.; Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. iv., cols. 4825-6.